He doesnâ€™t understand how enhanced interrogation works. I mean, you break somebody, and after theyâ€™re broken, they become cooperative.

Let’s ignore the morals and the facts here, and concentrate on the language. If you think that human beings are things that you’re allowed to break, you cannot properly be called either a “Christian” or a “conservative.”

Author: Mark Kleiman

Professor of Public Policy at the NYU Marron Institute for Urban Management and editor of the Journal of Drug Policy Analysis. Teaches about the methods of policy analysis about drug abuse control and crime control policy, working out the implications of two principles: that swift and certain sanctions don't have to be severe to be effective, and that well-designed threats usually don't have to be carried out.
Books:
Drugs and Drug Policy: What Everyone Needs to Know (with Jonathan Caulkins and Angela Hawken)
When Brute Force Fails: How to Have Less Crime and Less Punishment (Princeton, 2009; named one of the "books of the year" by The EconomistAgainst Excess: Drug Policy for Results (Basic, 1993)
Marijuana: Costs of Abuse, Costs of Control (Greenwood, 1989)
UCLA HomepageCurriculum Vitae
Contact: Markarkleiman-at-gmail.com
View all posts by Mark Kleiman

I just don’t understand, these Republicans keep digging deeper and deeper trenches of hypocrisy for themselves, but someone (the media?) seems to backfill & leave them no worse off in the public eye. Or maybe there’s something wrong with the public eye. It’s exasperating.

The R’s keep promoting torture because the public likes it. It’s the basest of pandering to the lowest urges, plain & simple. When the “bad guys” get tortured, our side wins. The syllogism is quite easy enough for even a 4th grade education.

The purpose of torture is that it allows a certain segment of the population to feel better about itself. It works. More importantly, its use marks victory over the ‘near enemy’ even if it leaves the ‘far enemy’ untouched.

I agree with Pol Foot that we needn’t turn Mr. McCain into a hero on this. McCain is a butthead in a hundred different ways. But, to hear Rick F’ing Santorum yacking that McCain “doesn’t understand enhanced interrogation.” Oy, the mind reals

Bux,
Depends on what you consider a human being. Pro-choicers pretty much have to be assuming that embryos aren’t human beings. Busheviks pretty much have to be assuming that swarthy types in captivity aren’t human beings. Are you equating the two? I suppose so.

Bux: I am pro-choice, and I do think fetuses are human. They are not “people” though, and more to the point for me, they are inside someone else’s body, and therefore, not properly a subject for legislation or state power. Is that libertarian enough for you?

And I suppose you support birth contol and sex ed (ie prevention), right? Oh wait …

And don’t bother responding, I can’t believe I got sucked into this and now I have to go to the office where I can’t post. For the record, abortion is pretty much not worth discussion anymore.

Perhaps this is the group to ask about a historical factoid I remember reading as a child, but have been unable to find since then. Back when the inquisition was, uh, putting native americans to the question as part of the larger conversion effort, the story goes that one person was offered the chance to be baptized before his execution. He asked what the good of that would be and was told that if he died in a state of grace his soul would be saved. To which he replied, “Are there more christians in heaven?”

For all I know it was just anti-catholic propaganda, but if so Santorum is life imitating art.